Good afternoon everyone and officially welcome to our Kelly outlook in Indianapolis. We're so glad to have you joining us this afternoon. We certainly missed gathering with you for breakfast in Indianapolis as we normally do. But due to these times, we're thrilled that you've been able to make some time to join us today for this annual outlook tradition. On behalf of the Indiana Business Research Center and the Kelly School of Business Alumni Association. I do officially welcome you. My name is Jen Bowen's. I serve as interim executive director of the Office of Development and engagement. And it's my pleasure to officially welcome you today. Before we get to why you're here, I want to just to share a few bit of housekeeping details. Again, you'll notice you'll remain on mute today. That is just to help us run most efficiently and we thank you for your cooperation. However, this is not meant to be a mute, a muted participation, participation we want to hear from you, we want your questions. That is a real asset about this program. So I will be monitoring the chat function if you have technical issues, if you have questions as we move throughout the panel, please post those as they come to you. We will have ample time at the end of this to get to your questions and to make sure that this is as much of a conversation as possible. So again, pose questions at any time. If you are having any sort of technical issues, post those there as well. And my colleague Kelly and I that worked behind the scenes, we'll be sure to assist you and we look forward to your questions. But without further ado, I would like to welcome Phil cow, who will be serving as moderator today for our panel. Fill serves that Kelly School's Associate Dean of Academic Programs and is the Clinical Associate Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy. Previously becoming Associate Dean, leading our Indianapolis campus in July of 2016, fill served as faculty chair for four of our major graduate programs, the evening MBA program in Indianapolis, the full-time MBA program in Bloomington, and the Kelley Direct Online MBA and MS programs. He's also been instrumental in the launch of the physicians MBA dual degree program with the IU School of Medicine. He's a wonderful advocate, a passionate leader, and as you'll quickly learn, just very informative when it comes to economy economists by trade fell if I'm not mistaken. So we're thrilled to have him leading us today, and I will turn it over to you and the piano. Thank so much. Thank you. Did it is you're right. It is a it is a shame that we can't be together. But the show goes on. If there's ever a time to talk about I got what forecasts. It's male. Dean Kasner since her greetings. If you were to summarize, the mission of the Kelly School is to positively transform the knowledge, the people, the organizations, and the communities that we touch. And we, we focus in a major way on our Indianapolis region. Let's bet, from both of our campuses, we have two major objectives in, in, in helping our region. We want to graduate talent that meets labor needs and fuels regional prosperity. And we want to broaden business opportunity for businesses and residents. Ugly challenge communities in our region. Inclusive economic development is an important mission. And helping our community understand what to, what to expect in the next year is part of fulfilling that mission. We have a great lineup today. Both of, of, of forecasts, but also discussion of how we're going to meet the challenges in our community. So that further ado, let me, I'm going to introduce our panel in succession and then we'll start non-dominant tradition in the way that they'll be speaking. For after, after the, my introductions you'll hear from Professor Cathy bonds or Neil. Kathy. School is if as long as I have we came management as colleagues. Kathy a served as even MBA faculty chair in the past. She's a she's a one of our professors of finance. She has an accomplished research record in international economics and finance. She has her PhD from Chicago, probably the best economics department in the country. And she'll be cathode would give us, given us some insight on the national economy and on, on US financial markets. Following Cathy will be another colleague of mine at business economics professor Carl Anderson. Kal got his PhD and his MBA from the Kelly School of Business. And also before that had an accomplished career in health care. As I mentioned, Cathy had been even NBA Faculty Chair. Kyle is our current even MBA faculty, faculty chair and has led a very pivotal new curriculum change in the last couple of years and is encountering a lot of success. Cow's going to talk to us about give us more of a, of a state and regional perspective on what 2021 holds for us economically. From column Kathy, we go to more of a, of a, of a more apply discussion of how the region, how we're, how we're dealing with the economic challenges in the region. When you talk about Indianapolis, we punch above our, our grade in terms of all sorts of of economic development measures. But we're constantly challenged by the talent issue. Professor Charlotte Western house rent fro, who's our new associate faculty chair of the undergraduate program at IEP. Why? She has her JD from our school, has an accomplished executive career. She served as a vice president at the NC double a under Myles Brand. She was also interim president at Martin University. Charlotte is leading the Kelly schools charge on some new projects and new initiatives to bring our undergraduate curriculum closer to meeting the needs of our, of our, of our firms in the region. Not only in terms of talent, but also fulfilling the need, the very important need for a diverse and talented workforce. And Charlotte, we'll talk about some of the of the, of, of the new Kelley School strategic push in that area. We got some great ideas coming out of our new career focused curriculum in the undergraduate program at IEP. Why? Lastly, we have Michael Huber. He's a he's a friendly face. He's one of ours. He is, as you know, President and CEO of the NDI chamber. Under his leadership since 2013 AND chamber has really become a national leader and showing you how I, how I Chamber of Commerce can lead regional development. When I first came to the Dean's office in 2016, I immediately reconnected with my call. Michael's an alum of the school. He got his MBA from the Kelly School. I had the pleasure of having him in class. It was great to reconnect with him. In fact, a lot of the initiatives from the chamber have inspired the new vision that we have coming out of our academic programs and IEP, why Michael's going to talk about his from his perspective, how the chamber and other important partners in the region are going to be tackling the challenges that the local economic challenges that we face in 2021. So star panel here, without further ado, I'm going to hand it over to to Kathy ill. And let her talk about our economy and will hit it at the national level. Kathy takeaway. Thank you. Well Well, welcome everyone and pleasure to be here and hope you're all staying well. Well, this is an interesting time to be making and economic forecasts for sure. And a year ago when we were providing our economic outlook, of course, we had no idea what was, what was ahead that year. We were forecasting growth to a little bit about 2%. So of course, after January fifth and the World Health Organization's discovery or announcement of pneumonia of unknown causes that started the whole pandemic and with restrictions on mobility on businesses that began to unfold. So what I'd like to do before we present our, before I present the forecast is just kind of catch you up on where we've been over this very volatile and unusual year. So where do we stand now? At the end of 2020. So just kind of remind you of where we've come from. So after the restrictions began to unfold in March of 2020, GDP plunged in the second quarter by 31%. This is the largest quarterly decrease on record well, after quarter to that dramatic plunge. And you can see that on the chart on the far left, GDP then rose by 33% in quarter three. So where does this leave us? Well, that 31% plunge drove us down to 2015 levels of GDP. But 33% increase has brought us back to about our level in 2018. But as you can see on that chart on the left, we are still far from where we were prior to covet 19. In addition, of course, we've seen a dramatic and huge loss of jobs. So the economy to date, based on the most recent October jobs report that came out in October, has recovered about 12 million of the 22 million jobs that were lost in March and April, the unemployment rate has fallen from 14.7 to 16.9% as of the recent numbers released or October, we have interest rates that have fallen to historic lows, both short-term. And long-term. And inflation remains below the Fed's target. Now and all of this, of course, there's been differences in how the economy has as reflected this, we know that the drop in GDP has been particularly hard on services. Consumer service suspending. Consumer services, by the way, comprise about 70% of total consumer spending. So when people were prevented and through self actions from going out and engaging and participating and service activities such as restaurants and theaters and travel. That that was a significant share of consumer spending. That was just stopped. And that's why we're looking at this whole year, that, that part of that year as a results, the pandemic as a sudden stop and economic activity. But we're seeing recovery. And again, both those charts on the bottom are indicating some of this recovery. In addition to the historic low interest rates with long-term interest rates now below 1%. That's the Treasury 10-year bond rate which has not been below 1% before, with inflation being low around the 2% level. We've also seen extraordinary a reserve and fiscal support. So just to give you an indication, the Federal Reserve has purchased about 3 trillion worth of assets. The other extraordinary aspect of Federal Reserve support has been not only their purchase, their traditional assets during the global financial crisis, they were purchased saying short-term, long-term bonds, mortgage back security assets, but they've widened that to a larger group of assets, including providing support for corporate bonds and municipal bonds and other kinds of asset-backed securities, as well as providing a main street lending program. So essentially a lending program that is helping small and medium-size businesses. So that's brought the Federal Reserve's balance sheet up to about $7 trillion. So that's a, that's an extremely large increase. Of course, we know that the federal stimulus has also been about 3 trillion due to the cares act and other measures that have been taken that has risen, cuts the budget deficit to rise to nearly 16% of GDP. And the overall federal debt as a share of GDP to rise to about a 135%. Well, both those federal reserve and government actions were critical to supporting income and importantly also to supporting financial market stability. We did see signs of market stress. In March, the entry at the Federal Reserve helped bring down those stress levels so that we did not see long-term disturbances in financial markets globally. We've seen the same head, of course, around the world. The International Monetary Fund is estimating that the global economy will have shrunk by 4.4% in 2020. Now there is some variation across that. Losses tend to be greater in Europe, UK, and Latin America. China is, is expected to have grown just under 2% in 2020 after, of course, having a much earlier hit at the end of 2019, first part of 2020. So that's where we are and I put these charts and just so that you can see, we've seen we have seen recovery, but we're not back to where we were prior to this pandemic. Could I have the next slide, please? Thank you. I wanted to also just talk a little bit about financial markets. I mentioned the very low interest rates that we're seeing. What about the stock market? Well, the stock market has also recorded record drops and also record highs. When we look at the stock market in terms of the S and P 500 and the nasdaq Composite. However, as we see in that lower chart, we've seen a very sharp drop in March, actually starting about February 19th to the market with somewhat anticipating the drop and economic activity as news lock downs and the spread of covert accelerated. But then around March 23rd, the market started recovering. And that recovery continued so that the market started reaching essentially reach new highs in as, as early as September of this year. What these lines are on the bottom? The top line is nasdaq, the green, the red line is the S and P 500. That black line is the Russell 2 thousand index on the left, which indicates the, about 2 thousand of smaller companies in, in that or for publicly traded. So you can see that S and P 500 companies measured by the index or the S and P 500 Index has recovered and moved past its pre-coded level as has nasdaq, however, the index representing smaller companies has not. And that's why I think it's important to understand when you're looking at the stock market that there's been a very much a differential impact of covert 19. And these lock downs on sector stock performance. We saw gains in information technology and consumer discretionary, and Staples and health. With the largest gains being and information technology and consumer discretionary. And by the way, consumer discretionary actually includes Amazon. We saw extreme negative hits to energy given the sharp fall in oil prices that we saw in the first half of the year. Also to finance an industrials. Industrials include airlines. So with curtailment, the stopping of travel, Airlines where particularly hard hit. And so we've seen this differential impact. But the other thing that I think is important to realize about the S and P 500 and indices like this, is there not a reflection of the economy. So when we look at technology, media, telecom together, that it comprises about 8% of GDP. 35% of the market capitalisation. If we just look at the top five stocks in the S and P 500, this dispersion is even more heightened, even more. So on the left is the market weight at market capitalization weighted. So the chart on the right, but the bar on the left shows the market capitalization weighted increase of the top five companies. So that includes Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, alphabet. So those, those companies are the top five. And if we subtract those top five companies were actually in negative territory for the S and P 500. So the S and P 500 has really been driven by growth in a very small number of companies that comprise a large weight in the index. So this is the irrelevant as we watch the market for an indication of what's, what is this telling us about? Perhaps the economy. It's telling us that there are some firms that had been highly rewarded. But as the Russell 2 thousand index is also showing, there have been many companies in terms of market performance that have not recovered. Could I have the next slide plates? Thank you. So this is our Based on this to bring us up to date. Where do we think the economy is going to be headed going forward? Well, we are expecting continued positive economic growth, rising in real GDP that could even return us to the 2019 GDP levels that by about the middle to the end of next year. But that growth is going to decelerate as we go through the year. We can't maintain thirty-three percent growth forecast for fourth quarter are much lower and we're assuming a more normal growth rate around to the 2.5% going forward. As part of that, we expect consumer spending recovery to continue. But still there, it will be stronger in the goods rather than in the services purchased. This again, services are the largest component of spending. So that means consumer spending won't necessarily be fully recovered. As we go into 2021. Investment spending we expect to be strongest in the residential sector. Housing is booming right now, but business construction is weak and it's likely to remain weak going forward. Investment spending on equipment is expect, is expected to continue to recover. But a lot of that could be reflecting replacements. So very cautious on that. Business earnings continue to recover and there is some evidence that companies are adjusting their starting to invest in new technology. To adjust to this new normal of our business environment, we expect employment growth will continue, but at a slower pace. We don't expect to really, to reach pre-coded levels of employment. Or the lower an unemployment rate that we saw in the first part of 2020 reached until 20 to 2022 or 2023. So we're not going to see a full recovery in the labor market. More concerning is the risk that some job losses could be permanent. And that's gonna, that could lower economic growth going forward. We expect interest rates to remain around current levels. That's what the Fed has indicated. And we expect inflation to be very moderate, even though the Fed has adjusted its, its inflation target to allow for a bit more inflation, we expect global economies to recover, but at different speeds. Global economy to recover by, to grow by about 5.2% is what the IMF is forecasting. But that will also differ across region with growth in China are expected to be high growth in some European countries and Japan lower. But again, I'd like to emphasize that these are expectations, but they come with a large degree of uncertainty depending on the spread of COBIT 19 on personal and government responses to that. Whether we need additional restrictions, whether consumers decide for themselves that they need to curtail their up there, mobility, activity and engagement outside of their home and the availability of the vaccine. We had good news today from Pfizer on the vaccine. So that's very hopeful, but there still remains much uncertainty about when that will be available. And we'll also have policy uncertainty as we figure out what, what the ultimate result of the election could mean for any changes in policy going forward. So I'll look forward to any questions that you have going after this. Thanks. Okay, thanks cathy. Now I'm going to talk about the Indiana economy and a little bit about the Indianapolis economy as well. Basically, my role here is to kind of build off of Cathy's presentation and then talk about what, what differences there are four, Indiana in Indianapolis a little bit. So one thing to always keep in mind about Indiana's economy is that we're kind of pro cyclical, that is. And in this graph, maybe a little bit hard to see on your screen. But the left bar is employment growth in Indiana. The percentage change in employment growth. And the right bar is for the US. And basically the point here is here is that when the economy is going well, Indiana often outpaces in employment growth. And when, when recessions hit or tough economic times hit. And basically what we did was took the observations. There are annual data except for the last year which kind of split in the middle. So Indiana's was hurt more, but during the shutdown period than the US as a whole. And a lot of that had to do with things like manufacturing, with, with goods production that we're shut down. We can do some businesses worked from home, but you can't really do manufacturing in a work from home environment. So Indiana was hit hard kind of March through May. But we're recovering a little more quickly again because of putting that back together, the unemployment rate in Indiana stands at 6.2%. But there's one thing to always keep in mind about the unemployment rate. And, and I put on here that 60 thousand people are missing. And that basically represents the decline in the workforce this year. Up till now. So we have 60 thousand people who have left the labor force. And we know from research that that's disproportionately women who are leaving the workforce. And so that suggests strongly that the biggest driver of that is family reasons. The fact that, that schools are fully open everywhere and other sorts of family obligations have caused people leave the workforce. If you added those back in, the unemployment rate, if you counted them as unemployed and we don't count them as unemployed right now because they're now looking for work and not working. But if you counted them, the unemployment rate would be closer to 9% in Indiana. So there's definitely some, some challenges there. And not all of these, you know, we tend to think about everything being pandemic related and it really is right now. But we have seen over the last couple of years, significant trade policy difficulties that have put a damper on Indiana's growth a little bit. So that's just kind of the broad overview of the Indiana economy. Now let's take a look at Indianapolis. So when I talk about Indianapolis here, I'm largely talking about the Indianapolis Carmel slash Anderson, the basically the the Marion County and the region surround that going all the way up to Andersen and down the Greenwood around Indianapolis definitely swings at above its weight. In the Indiana economy, we produce about 34% of the output, generate 34% of the income. Income, with about 29% of the population. And in most metrics, such as unemployment rate and income that we, we tend to leave the state, although that has closed a little bit. So the unemployment rate in in Indianapolis MSA is very similar to Indiana's Right now. We're usually it's significantly lower. Of course, there's a big area of the Indianapolis economy. We want to talk a little bit about some of the challenges facing downtown right now. And part of the reason Indianapolis has been hit a little bit harder is think about the dependents on things like travel and tourism that the convention business, the airport struggling right now. These are all all industries that impacting the Annapolis much more so than other areas of the stay on. One of the things that I'm really keeping an eye on is the impact of on government spending and whether we're going to be faced with cutting back on government spending. And I'm talking a, either an impact and federal government, but I'm thinking about state government and local government spending. That if that's pulled back significantly due to tax shortages, then we're going to see a slower recovery than we otherwise would. Some cancellation of events 2021 was set to be a great year for Indianapolis with with some very large events, the NBA All-Star Game that the CWA men's basketball final four. And these are likely to be either canceled or, or at least diminished from an economic driver sort of viewpoint. Downtown faces significant challenges, just work from home and people. And some of these changes may well be permanent even after we have a vaccine or get past this Coburn 19 pandemic, however that, that looks like. And then social and political unrest as again hit more cities than other places. And part of that is reality and part of that is a perception that Indianapolis or downtown areas in general are places that people may not want to be as much. But there are some, some real bright spots. Kathy talked a little bit about real estate, residential real estate is doing extremely well in Central Indiana. And a lot of our companies are doing quite well. Also. With that, I want to kind of move into the forecast for the area. So just like the national forecasts, we will see output increases and jobs growth in 2021. And arguably that will offset the damage of 20-20. And one way to think about this is basically we're, I think we're going to end up with a lost two years in when we're back together here next November of 2021. I think that time period will look very much like November 20th, 19 did. So we're going to have an economic output in an employment situation very close to that, but will lost two years of growth. And that's a very significant loss due to this pandemic. I think we need economic stimulus. In the Indiana forecasts in Indianapolis, we think a lot about Northern Indiana still has a lot of dependence on big manufacturing, the auto industry, RVs areas in the state that are really dependent upon that, and consumer incomes are going to be a part of that. So a stimulus package being passed that, that's up good size, either here in the fourth quarter, the remaining or maybe more likely in the first quarter of 2021, would be extremely beneficial. Small businesses face all sorts of challenges and we're seeing that everywhere, but the downtown is certainly no exception. But all around Central Indiana, a lot of small businesses are struggling. Specific industries or restaurant has put hospitality hotels. Some of those businesses are really hurting right now. Over the next year, I think on appointments going to fall to between 4, 5%, which is kind of a wide range in there, but that reflects a lot of the uncertainty that's going on. And all of this is just dependent upon the pandemic improving and us being able to at the very least sustain strong economic activity while we deal with the pandemic. And, and let's all hope that dealing with it means that an effective vaccine and maybe being effectively able to move on from it in the relatively near future. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Charlotte and talk about some of our high UPI initiatives. Thank you. Coun I'm so excited. But really, really, really excite our employees. And that is, there will be a rebound. And there won't be a rebound. It may take a little bit, but we can't and dry up the pipeline of talent. There'll be prior prior to 19, there was a national need, a regional need for talent. And as we rebound, we will have to keep that pipeline full of talent, talent battle and figure-eight businesses here and Central Indiana, Indiana, and nationally. Now, Kayla has always been a leader in this, and especially here at IU PUI. We've expiration we'll learning is a major thing throughout our undergraduate curriculum and we have a saying here, your next business idea may come from Kelly, even while our students on roll. Before I tell you about some of the new exciting things that will be happening this upcoming academic year. I wanted to give you a quick, quick overview location are familiar with our curricula on some of the things that have sustain business growth in the pass here. And we'll we degraded and the future within our curriculum. Now, I Kelly, you start business school as a junior. As a junior at your very first semester, you get into something we call the integrated core, i corr. And all of our students take a course in marketing, finance, operations, supply chain management, really important skills and those courses for central ND NA. And they also take team dynamics and leadership so they could actually get into the workplace and do well from day one. Now, they work on a project as juniors is a cross-functional semester long project. And here's the added value. All of our Kelly Grant had to develop a business plan, working with real businesses here in central Indiana. And they have introduce new products and new services that are immediately had an impact on the needs of various target markets. This is a longstanding program and it probably supports the reason why that even in the midst of the onset of the pandemic this past spring, 97% of our graduates within 90 days had me full employment in the areas that they want it. Now, we could just have stands still just on that record. But once again, we understood. To move forward, our employers and recent graduates were telling us to move forward. We have to actually have bigger rate this even more. Work plus the learning as extremely important. But we want to reach more students so they can learn and work. So a conjunction where integrated core to start synergy a year. We'll have new exciting courses coming this upcoming Fall semester that will help our students improved remarkability, increase their success once they graduate. Actually give them meaningful internships while they're freshman and sophomores more and more. Prior to over 19 of our employees said they weren't really looking for more interns. And that also will come back. So what we're going to do is add a new courses for pre business students. Freshman and sophomores won't. They will be put with with technology, up to date technology and have experienced a managing simulated businesses freshman and sophomore year prior to going prior to going into our integrated core. This will not only enhance their mark ability and their success, but also it will make a positive impact and economic impact on our community. Filing and doing this, we are still going to keep our bedrock of keeping all of these on offerings affordable. Where part of Indiana University, Purdue University Indianapolis, and our tuition, especially for in-state students, will remain affordable. But here's the value. Upon graduation. The ability to go out and work and work well and worked successfully from freshman year to senior year and to graduation and asked them real value. The real value for most of our students. I perhaps you, when you went to school, was you were trying to better yourself economically and better your community as well, as well as intellectual capability. And finally, we are extremely proud of the fact that we are very, very much into fostering and supporting the growing diversity and inclusivity in our region, which will surely help us few a pathway out of Coburn 19 and to future success and boom for central Indiana. And speaking of success and boom, there's no one else I know better than this. How Indian atlas can strive again, bribe again, would be Michael Hubert. Michael take it away. Thanks so much, Professor Western house Renfrew and I want to thank you and Professor bouncer Neil and Professor Anderson for that outlook. And this is the local focus in less than five minutes because I know we want to get to the questions. And I appreciate the opportunity from the Kelly School and to listen to three diverse perspectives in terms of what we're looking at as we look into 2021. I'm going to do the the good, the bad, or the challenging, and the opportunity before we move on to the Q and a one. Really important point as we think about the Indianapolis region and the Indie chamber organization has over 2 thousand business members and a nine county region. So when we think about Indianapolis, we generally think nine counties. It is true and Professor Anderson's presentation reinforce this. There's a mix of industries in the Indianapolis region that make this in some ways some great opportunities, but definitely some challenges to, I would say in terms of the industry is doing very well. E-commerce and logistics are doing very well. You heard that from our presenters before. Life sciences indy has got a cluster of companies, Lily Roche and others, their suppliers, who have really ramped up production in the fight against COBIT 19, we'll get to the hospitality sector in a second, which, which is very challenging. But there's a mix of industries here that could stand to do very well compared to other metros. It's a diversified economy that you don't see from some of our other competitors cities, even like Nashville, Tennessee, which is a hot market, there's a great mix here. There's also were looking at could Indianapolis win in the next world where these really, really expensive dense metros for young people, for IU kelly graduates like New York, San Francisco, there's a question mark as to how fast people will come back. A lot of people, especially young people, young people with kids, have left those cities or less expensive areas where they can stretch out a little bit more or less dense areas. And there's a scenario in which in the long run, Indy could win when you look at people who are being displaced by very expensive metros. So we need to think about that. Certainly. We need to play up and become stronger in retaining and recruiting and attracting the diversity that Professor Western house rent fro is talking about. But there's a scenario which Indianapolis could win. The bad or the challenging is a lot of what Professor Anderson said. The losses in the hospitality sector right now are heartbreaking. Heartbreaking if you just live anywhere in the region there, heartbreaking for us as a business association an hour before this call started, they got word that in here and Fall Creek place on the near north side of Indianapolis, one of our favorite restaurants is closing. I don't know if they'll come back. And so we're waiting with bated breath to see if Congress will pass another aid package, you know, before we get a new presidential administration and some members of Congress, my hope is, I don't have that much hope for the next couple of months for that, but we're hoping that another round of aid package could do a lot of good to save a lot of these small businesses. And again, back to Professor Anderson's presentation about downtown. Downtown Indianapolis has a disproportionate share of the jobs in central Indiana. In a central Indiana that already provides a disproportionate amount of jobs for the entire state. Downtown Indianapolis, just psychologically is really, really important. And, and the problem is the two biggest drivers of economic activity in our downtown, which is special events and people coming in for special events or sporting events. And the concentration of major employers, many of whom are still keeping their employees at home or having them work on flex schedules. We don't know what's going to happen until we know more about vaccine or advanced treatments. Then another thing is. Are all of our jobs got a little bit tougher with the election results on Tuesday because I will say that a lot of people are happy about the change in presidential administration. I don't I'm not talking, that's not, that's not a partisan statement, but here's something that can't be disputed. The rural areas in America and in Indiana just got a little bit more red, and the urban areas just got a little bit more blue. That can be really challenging at a time when we need state and local governments. Be very nimble and interpret information from the public health experts in terms of how businesses are going to respond. And so all of us as individuals, all this is organizations need to be a force to build these bridges and get public officials who don't maybe think alike to act for the good of all of our communities, the opportunities and what we tell all of our members, Dr. Phil pal tells, remembers this. Now is the time if you've still got a functioning business, call yourself lucky and form new business partnerships. Experiment with new ways to deliver services because we're not out of this. You're seeing a lot of creative ideas for hosting events. I'm not kidding myself that these new ways for hosting distanced events are going to be enough to get us out of the recession, but it still now is the time for creativity for doing new things. The future of Indianapolis has got to bring more regional collaboration. Because one thing that you're seeing with a lot of the fear related to downtown Indianapolis and downtowns everywhere though, is a lot of people think that they can, you know, go away to the suburbs, pull their business out to the suburbs and sort of get away from the problem. And the fact is we cannot, the ripple effects from downtown Indianapolis to the region to the state are just too powerful. And so I know we're going to be a force in making sure that everybody in the entire region feel, whether you live in Carmel or Greenwood or wherever you feel some ownership of downtown Indianapolis because it impacts you no matter where you live in these nine counties. There's also a genuine move by many of our employers, especially major employers, to get meaningful work done in the area of racial equity into break to recruit more aggressively African Americans and people of color and promote them to management to their boards. A genuine commitment of companies who are made commitments to hire more. Suppliers, own businesses owned by black entrepreneur, entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color. And it's not just one or two, it is dozens of businesses who have signed onto the lily pledge. If you haven't been tracking that, you can look that up a few weeks go so we can see a lot of great potential coming out of what's very challenging, very challenging time and is going to be for a while. But I can't emphasize this enough. Having conversations right now in our own circles of influence and business circles with people who don't think like us has never been more important. I heard a professor on NPR this morning to say, be relational, not confrontational. That business has got a unique ability to bring people together around and try to form these concepts of an economic common good, and I'll ultimately a common good. And it is so important right now that we do that as a community, even in our own business circles. So lots more to talk about. I sure appreciate being a part of this panel. With that, I believe will go to the Q and a. Michael, thank you so much as my colleague separate kinda comes back and it turns our cameras on and we'll go to the Q and a. I just want to I just wanna give you praise Michael, for your leadership in the community. In March, you pull in community leaders including myself and said we're going to have a rapid response effort. And the Kelly School since has been supporting Michael's chambers approach to making sure our small businesses are supported. Well, let me say real quick, I'll get in the Kelly School. It's documented has helped hundreds of businesses with essentially technical expertise, advice from students and faculty. And we've just created a new program called the Enterprise core, which I believe CR yo RPS, which is the Kelly School, providing that expertise to small business owners. And we're hoping to scale that program. We're so appreciative fill to you and other faculty members who are giving generously of their time to vulnerable businesses to try to keep them thriving. And some of them, in some cases, just keep them alive during this incredibly challenging times. So thank you. Absolutely. Michael is great to work with you. This is about something larger than ourselves. It's about helping our businesses grow and recover in an inclusive and equitable way. So anyway, we've got limited time. I'm going to take all my panelists, my colleagues, but we're here to answer the questions that our audience has. So stood. Still, start brilliant launch and thank you for all the submissions. The first one is specifically for Catherine or Kathy. But anyone can answer and question is this, why is it that five large companies are making, are keeping stocks high, but all others seem to struggle. What's the disconnect between the stock market and the local economies in livestocks rebounded when so many people are still out of jobs or businesses continue to close. Well, in terms of the five stocks, these are technology stocks. And so it's, to me, it's signaling to things while one, you've seen a tremendous rise in the price of stocks like Apple and Microsoft and Amazon that are providing really technology-based services. And technology is important going forward. And, and companies that can be a part and innovate using technology and including AI are going to get ahead. So I think part of the Increases just reflecting the future. Also, these five companies just have a significant weight right now in the index. So that's why you have to be careful about drying. Broad conclusions about companies, just looking at the index. But companies have recovered their health. Companies have been positive. Earnings are projected to be, have positive growth. Revenues are expected to have positive growth overall for S and P 500 companies in 2021. So I'm not saying that prices are going to be down across the board, but I do think that the rewards are going to be going towards companies that are able to adapt to the new business climate and who are going to be embracing some of these technological innovations. Thank you. Anyone want to add to that? I have a couple of COBIT related questions. I'm going to see if I can pose these sorted together. The first one has a little bit of context. This individual says that I feel like we've been presented with a binary choice during this pandemic. Support the economy, let people get sick or kill the economy, and let people be safe. It makes us perverse situation where we're encouraged to go out one day than health care workers are exhausted to keep us alive. Is this really a binary choice? Is the question, is there any way we could keep people safe? And health care workers saying without ending up kinda in the street and falling apart, do you think this is a binary choices at one or the other, economy or safety? Any thoughts on this? If I can jump in and just say, I'll maybe start us out. And to say that I absolutely don't think it's binary choice. In fact, it's the opposite, right? I, I think it's, we need to be sure to get the virus under control if we want to grow the economy and add, we're really not going to recover the economy until we get some control. Now, I think there are some middle grounds, right? We started out in March and April and our our our approach still was complete shotgun. Right. And and what we've learned over time, it seems like we can take some steps whether it's masking certain levels of social distancing, building ways then that the economy can sing, can continue to perform and start to recover. And we're seeing cases go up, but I'm not sure that's directly related to that, an economic activity. So I think there's a middle ground near where we need to be smart with. Okay. We understand that we need to have the academy gelling. But health and safety are first and foremost, both from a, from a human perspective and we just want to have a healthy population, healthy society. But also from an economic perspective, we need to get the virus under control and limit the spread. Any others want to add to that? I think that's very well set. Another COBIT question really, more specifically, today with Kobe cases rising rapidly right now, especially in Indiana, do you think manufacturers are going to have to shut down periodically to limit the spread? It's very possible. And I know that if there was an ND Chamber member, we would advise any of our manufacturing members to have a plan ready to go if it came to that. And that's why I can't emphasize enough what Professor Anderson just said. And to the question, we've gotta get outside the politicization of everything from masks to health and safety policies has been really, really unfortunate because government, public health officials and also essential workers in medicine, it's been easy. I've been easy targets because just because your state or your city says it's okay to open, doesn't mean that there's going at, that customers are going to be comfortable going into your space. People are smart. They see the number of cases and so getting control of the virus and making sure that case, that the number of cases is moving in the right direction has gotta be fundamental. And I applaud the, the, also the, the questions in terms of getting us out of this either-or proposition, it's not helping anybody. Yeah, I'll just edit that when you, when you actually, there's data on, on mobility and what people are doing. And you can see that it hasn't recovered. And, and that is not due to necessarily top-down restrictions that do come due to comfort level. People feeling comfortable enough to go out and and so until that is recovered. And again, coming back to what both Michael and Kyle said, we're going to see some curtailment of business and consumer activity. Thank you. All right. That's okay. This next question is directed to Kyle, but again, if anyone wants to chime in, feel free. Kyle, why don't we expect unemployment rate, the unemployment rate to go down? And is it based on the assumption that coronavirus cases will also go down? Or does it include the fact that a number of people who are part of the unemployment statistics are will stop looking for jobs. Yeah, well, I certainly don't think it's I mean, that can certainly happen that people leave the labor force though the unemployment rate goes down because of that. But I hope that's not the case. I hope we're actually seeing a lot of job creation in part of the reason that that forecast shows the unemployment going rate going down is because I'm looking out across the 2021 year. So I certainly think by next summer and next fall, we'll have strong enough job creation and that the coronavirus case and we will be going down. That doesn't necessarily mean that in December and January where we're better off than we are now. But I think, you know, on a longer view over the course of 2021, I certainly expect this to be positive job creation, hopefully folks coming back into the labor force. So those who have left the and our unemployment rate come down. Others just, I'll just say that, that nationally, I do think that people leaving the labor force is a concern. If you look at US labor force participation, it's recovered from where it was an April, but it's still down two percentage points from where it was in February and that's very significant. That means people have left the labor force and that amounts to about 1.13.2 million right now. People who are who have been unemployed for longer than 27 weeks. So that's, that is something that we're hoping will turn around. But it's a significant concern for growth going forward at a national level. Thank you. Another question to any of you. How do you anticipate potential executive orders from the incoming administration on current tax policies will affect reshoring manufacturing expansion plans, et cetera. I'm happy that's a really tough question. Because, you know, I mean, one of the things that I think we saw in this campaign is that it wasn't very policy Hadoop, right? So we didn't get real detail policy prescriptions from abided from what the by the administration is going to look like. He hear they ran a campaign largely based on issues that weren't really focused on policy. So it's made this forecast really difficult for us to try to identify what those effects are. The biggest thing I'll be looking at are some of the trade policy. Because I, I think that, you know, we are seeing a lot of our goods are being, Europe is imposing audit tariffs on US. Value that we heard a lot about the terrorists that the Trump administration put in. And these trade wars are just really damaging, especially here in Indiana, where we do a lot of manufacturing, a lot of that gets exported or our agriculture. So I'm really hopeful that it, especially from a trade perspective. And that's one area that, that really does sort of bypass Congress and, and a lot of instances. So it is something that you can see maybe relatively quick movement. Although we haven't heard a commitment to that from the administration. But I do think that companies are there going to be taking the lessons from this pandemic experience into consideration when they're considering that regardless of what policies are going to be coming. Somewhere is a definite consideration. Fabric API and maybe the Kichwa. I'm going to be really awesome interested for the higher education perspective. And also many of our large employers here at Eli Lilly, communist ROS, ROS home. Most Roland was voice Excuse me. They're looking at trying to get a lot of international import your potential employees and graduates. In the previous administration as basically been, Barry, negative has diminished the ability for getting talent from around the world to work here in Indianapolis or to attend our school. So I will be looking also was seeing what was happening as far as executive orders maybe changing so that we can bring back the talent from around the world that helped this city thrive. A lot of our major employers in the state are actually ONE BY companies outside of the United States, like Rolls Royce for instance, or Subaru and Lafayette. So I'll be interested to saying was happening with the immigration policy policy. We're letting individuals get green cars and also the policy we're letting people come into the United States. And this once again, That's choice around the world where people want to give higher education. Great feedback. Leave Two more questions. We'll try and get to both, but maybe want if any, are left on the table, I'll make sure these panelists can answer them and I will email those to you. I'd like to try to reassure we get your questions answered. This one, what are your thoughts on the entrepreneurial environment in Indianapolis, particularly seed or angel investing for new ventures. Or they're going to sit tight, see how things unfold? Or are they still looking to aggressively invest in the right spaces? Any thoughts or inside? I'll just say, I don't have the empirical evidence but just dump totally sector dependent. 100% dependent on what sector those ventures or in some, you know, clearly anything that's hospitality related has really pulled back some sectors of manufacturing and technology related to manufacturing doing quite well. Interesting, our, our digital marketing firms have been doing pretty well. We've actually been seeing that companies, it's, it's up and down, but a lot of companies are aggressively marketing themselves in new ways. But I'll defer to the other panelists. No. I mean, I think I'm seeing similar things like where you're probably the best one, you probably got your bulls on much of anybody. But I'm seeing some angel investing still going on. There's still ensures that the investors don't have money on the sidelines. Looking for a place. I mean, we're in a environment where stocks are inflated, interest rates are extremely low. I think that people are looking for opportunities to make investments. And so I, I think that the market is going to be pretty good for raising capital for firms. But, but I think Michael's points are very well taken. It's going to be industry dependent and, you know, we're in a high-risk environment right now. So looking forward, if the election hose in those sectors of opportunity that we a lot more if the president elect, Vice President Elect, we're now essentially honor vice president was a woman. I think many more female all businesses are going to get a hard look. I'm they should've gotten hard look. But I think I think Michael touched on it. There's the issue of diversity, inclusion and social justice area. If the, if the sectors right, I think people will be now eyes wide open and looking in there, looking for opportunities, especially for women own businesses. And I hope females out there who are interested well watch these sectors, they say now perhaps the ceiling has been cracked, especially in the area of technology and IT great. Thanks so much to everyone for these questions I'm responding if I need information, like I said, we will try to respond to the ones we blah, painting, but I want to honor everyone's time. We said we'd end at one. So fill any final thoughts from, you know, jet, we talk in the Kelly family that our students are loves or faculty or staff members of our community have the talent to succeed, the humility to grow, and the tenacity to persevere. Never have these values been so relevant in terms of surviving what's going to be a really tough first to second quarter. But also seeing through to the bounce back and the prosperity that this region is going to be was that we go forward with a tough here, but we're going to get through this altogether. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to say a huge thank you to all of these panelists. So thank you to those of you that are still hanging on here at the end right after one. You I will be emailing someone myself likely will be emailing you the report that usually walk away with from our good friends in Ib RC that will have a lot of this information, so that will still be provided. If you have any questions, feel free to email myself or the folks that have been emailing you with confirmation links. We're here to help. And it'll be an interesting next few months and interesting 2021. We hope you'll all remains safe and healthy. And we thank you for your support for the Kelly School of Business and particularly our Indiana Indianapolis region in the state of Indiana. So thank you to all. Have a wonderful afternoon and be well, and we will see you soon. Thank you.
